Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn on the ‘Pluribus’ Season 1 Finale

26:23And we all know those horrible moments when something horrific happens and you wake up the next morning and you have that little sliver of time where it's possible it was a nightmare. And then we stage it so you know that I turn and I see Helen's body and it comes crashing down. And then it's about playing those moments with or without dialogue. I'm thinking like, what's next? You would immediately think, well, did the whole thing happen? Was any of it a dream? Is it all real? and you just go from there and tell the story the same as you would without dialogue. Well, as an audience member, it's a different kind of watching that I think you're used to in contemporary television because there is a degree of wandering eye going on.

27:02I mean, just with the sheer amount of TV that I watch, sometimes I will like look at my phone or whatever while I'm watching something, but it's... Disappointing. We're all disappointed. I'll give up my Apple TV subscription if it's like as a penalty. But it's like, I can't do that with this show at all. You know, you have to, because even if you think like, what could I possibly see on this version of her listening to the voicemail message on this time? There's always something. There's always something being revealed. There's always something that you can be like, I now mark her emotional journey here because of this or whatever.

27:39And it's like, it's like actually just close watching. It's such a fascinating question. It's really more of just. I'm astounded by it too. I mean, yeah, we wrote it because we knew we are able to have that tool in the toolbox because we know Ray will pull it off. And not everybody can. I mean, not every actor can. And I mean, it's just, yeah, you can watch her over and over again. That's what the highest compliment for anything I can ever have a hand in making is if people want to rewatch it. and if people get together on their own time, then talk about it. And we hear anecdotally that that's happening a lot.

28:19And again, so much of it is Ray's ability to be watched and rewatched. And it's, you know, I used to think, you know, what is it that movie stars have? Is it what kind of, there's a certain charisma and there is, and it's ineffable and it's hard to, you know, a lot of people for many decades, generations have tried to figure out what it is. I don't know what it is, but I do know that when an actor is having all of that, is doing that hard work that Ray is doing. And also, all of these actors are, I mean, just as an example, Carlos Manuel Vezca in the last episode, he's all by himself too for a big chunk.

29:03And what both these actors have in common is they have this inner life. I'm just repeating kind of different words what Ray just said, but it just, there's a version of acting where you can just sort of, you know, where's the light? Is the light hitting me? Where am I on my mark? You know, and let the audience provide the context and the interpretation. But, but Ray is actively doing all that stuff and you can see, not my finest, the college of the jumbotron face. I say, Ray has a face like a jumbotron screen. I think it just popped into my head because it was right after that couple. The Coldplay thing.

29:43Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was like, you know, I meant it well. I had good intentions. But I was like, you see everything without any words. I mean, without any dialogue. So not everybody can do that. Oh, thanks. Yeah, he came right in. We were doing some press junk. I mean, he was in a different room. We come in the hall, and he's like, I need to tell you something I just said. And I was like, what? And he's like, I want to explain Jumbotron. And I was like, what? But you said like theater, and I absolutely agree. It is, to me, Better Call Saul and now Pluribus have been the closest to my experiences on stage.

30:23Yeah, I remember seeing The Humans in New York, the play, and Reed Burney has a moment in the beginning where he just, it's very tall. We used to call it sometimes holding the stage. You don't have to be doing something as long as you're thinking the thoughts and you'll suddenly get in sync with the thinking the thoughts, telling the story of the character and what they're doing and why are they pausing right now? Especially if it's not direct address, it's about something else that you're inviting them into. And Reed did it and the audience will start. It's like their heart starts sinking with yours and the breathing starts sinking with you and you can hear a pin drop.

31:03And I used to do that a lot. You're right. A lot of television will cut it. So you kind of almost start becoming afraid to add thoughtful pauses or meditative moments because they get cut. And then it looks like your timing is weird when they put it together. I learned a lot watching Jonathan Banks on Saul. I would go to set a lot to watch him because he had these long periods. And he's really, really good at inviting the camera in because I had a habit in the beginning that when they would give me very private moments, I would instinctively turn away from the camera because I do think of it as another entity there.

31:42And Jonathan will turn towards it without ever looking like he's just playing the camera and just let it be and let them be in on the secret. And I talked to him a lot about that. It was very helpful to me. That's really cool. there's a confidence Vince to some of the scenes that you include in the series and Chris mentioned like the Patrick Fabian voicemail and it's just like she's calling the phone and I'm like surely they'll cut away from it this time and they don't and we enjoy it and but I think it's worth drilling down a little further because it's definitely not in those moments my wife was actually like on like the 10th time she's like it's coming back around I'm going to do it I don't think I mean correct me if I'm wrong I don't think you're in the writer's room going make him watch it again And I sleep on a bed of Emmys.

32:24I don't think it's that. I do think that there is a level of confidence that is earned here because it's not just the incredible actors you have to hang these wordless scenes on, but you have, I would imagine, I'd love to hear you talk about it, a shorthand with production writ large. Like you couldn't write these scenes if you didn't have the relationship with the locations, with the people who've been working on your shows, with your writers, with your directors, to pull it off. The editors, exactly. Every visual element, because sometimes when scenes are overwritten, it's because the writer is just like, I can only control this.

32:55Oh, sure. That's a very astute observation. Yeah, and these people, they've been working with some of them almost two decades now. So, yeah, it's funny. The life is just rich with ironies. I love that you were saying, oh, you must be very confident. I'm the least confident person I've ever met. But some things I have a little more confidence about than others. And part of it is I'm never going to go broke assuming the audience is smarter than I am. And that has held us in good stead. All of us assume that. The writers, starting with us, we all assume that. The audience knows more than we do. And also the little spark of confidence in the knowledge that we don't need all of the audience.

33:44There are you guys. God bless you guys for digging what we do. God bless the folks listening. I assume they're fans too. But there's a whole world of people like, this show sucks. This show, all she does is wander around. But I mean, it's a small world. But that is as it should be. That's not a bad thing. If the audience was monolithic, the world would be the others. Better that than the others. Everybody being like, it's okay. Yeah. I have no reaction to this content whatsoever. We don't need everyone on earth. I don't even know what we need. That's the apples in their wheelhouse, not mine, as far as how many viewers they need to make something worthwhile.

34:24But I have confidence in that Ray is very watchable. And I have confidence in that. Thank you. It was the truth. And I have confidence in that people, there is an audience for this. It's not every human being on earth, but it's enough. I have confidence that the audience will reward us if we deal them squarely. Deal with them fairly. don't break the rules midstream. Don't, you know, but it just, and it just, and also hearing the example you gave, hearing Patrick Fabian over and over again, it wasn't in some weird way torturing the audience. It was more about what is the effect this would have on Carol?

35:06And I knew every single, I had confidence that every single time Ray would find a different way to listen to this voicemail, this outgoing message. I knew that every single time she would find a different way and she would make it funny. I mean, all of your responses are so different. After you get the last Westgate message, all the calls you make after that are like, no, fuck you. You know what I mean? Like, bring me a Gatorade, you know? There's this one thing we had fun too. Like one of the last times she's listening to it, after Diabate played an absolutely brilliant song by Shuta, has given her this news about you can tell them you don't consent.

35:46the director uh ganja montero came over and she said and you can see it in the wide um but it is a wide shot uh she said she's like she goes maybe carol would be like a little bit embarrassed about this message that they won't even talk to her that that's how bad her behave because i have not told uh maybe maybe the others the others probably did tell diabate that they don't speak to me but carol doesn't fully know that and it's a little embarrassing so even though she's like, Diane, get through the message because I want to tell you I don't consent. There's a small part that I added with her direction that made me laugh where I'm just like, it's just fine.

36:24Just kind of like, no big deal. I think it's just a busy signal. I got it. I got to push back on the no confidence thing in one specific way. This is an anecdote that we tell all the time, and you can tell us if this is completely untrue. But I think one of the most inspiring and wild anecdotes about the last 20 years of TV writing is the idea that you guys in the Breaking Bad room did not know what the gun in Walter White's trunk was going to be used for when you introduced it at the beginning of that season. That's true. Or the stuffed animal in the pool, which follows my mind. So you do keep making things hard for yourself and then writing yourself out of it.

36:58And I wondered if dropping an atom bomb on the front yard was in an attempt to, let's say, escalate things even further for you guys, or if you have a little more of a roadmap this time. We have a little more of a roadmap this time. That was the stupidity of youth with that m60 in the trunk of the cadillac that was the dumbest thing ever i think we had did you regret it for a long time oh there were times in the right that was one of the lowest points ever in any writer's room this is a heroic story this is i would stand against the wall at a certain point and i would just slowly bang my head against the wall and the writers were just like dude are you all right and i wasn't that hard but just trying to knock the ideas loose and they were just all just kind of the long silences, long and comfortable silences.

37:46And I would say, let's have a flight of fancy. Let's pretend we never did the M60 machine gun. And they're all like, okay, sure. Let's do that for five minutes and then let's get back to reality because you have to pay off the machine gun in the trunk. And it was like - You also told me occasionally, he'd be like, so then Walt goes to the car, he opens the trunk and puts his suitcase and they were like, no, you can't open the trunk. And it's like, damn it. You just kept trying to yada, yada at the gun. Yeah, I plead guilty to that. It was, I don't, we have ideas for what the atom bomb is for. And I think we had, the pink teddy bear, I think we kind of knew in our hearts that it came from, it was a classic bit of, or classic or not, it was a bit of misdirection.

38:38It was, oh my God, there must have been a terrible shootout in the house here. Oh no, it came from the sky. What is the most unlikely explanation for all this crap in the pool? Oh, but then it can't just be a random aircraft collision. Walter White has to have been responsible for it. That stuff was tough, but there was nothing ever tougher than the M60. That was hubris on my part. Oh, we'll figure it out. We got all you. We'll figure it out. I deserve all the pain that I inflicted upon myself. But the writers did not. I suppose if Ray gets the script for 201 and Carol's just storing her whiteboard markers in the Atom-Bomb cabinet, then he knows, there's nothing in there.

39:24It's a bluff. It's fine. It's fine.

39:54The Manuso's plot is something that is fascinating to me because his journey is so electrifying to watch, you know, that road trip that he takes to get through the Darien Gap and to get, to Carol. And you're playing it when he arrives, very defensively, but also kind of like, this is my home turf and I have my ideas about how I want things to go here. And I almost was curious whether or not, do you have to turn off the side of your brain that knows what else is happening in the other half of these scripts or in the other half of this story when you're acting just Carol's POV from those scenes?

40:32Well, we only get our scripts one at a time. Okay. I mean, usually around in the middle of shooting, like, let's say six, when I get seven. And occasionally I'll ask a few questions, but mostly, and this started happening on Better Call Saul, I realized it's not really, like, if I'm doing a play, understanding what the end point is is going to help me to reverse engineer what the most interesting point A is, right? To take that journey. But I think a lot of times we end up asking where something's going to help. And I have another series to help, to help understand, like, how do I, how do I help tell this story?

41:15I need to make sure that my character, I know later that I'm going to find out that my character's lying. So that's part of me playing it now versus I find in the world that Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould were creating that you're not, you're playing, it's not necessary. They don't need me to telegraph to the audience where the story's going. That's not my job anymore. And it was actually nice to have that burden taken away because oftentimes my RAM space is totally full with what I'm playing right now. Like there's a lot going on when he shows up, you know, it's a reminder that she's terrified that like deep down I'm being called out for like, not at all following through with my revolution.

41:56that I plotted. I'm also lying through my teeth that I don't know why they came back. Beats me. I can see that he can see that I'm lying, which is so fun to play. And he's a wonderful scene partner. She's protective, but also like baseline, because somebody asked me the other day, they were like, she's just so rude though. As soon as he comes out, I was like, he showed up with a machete. Yeah, in an ambulance. In an ambulance. It was like, I'm coming in and then bats my phone away from me. Like, I'm allowed to be a little pissy. It's very fun. Those, all the energies they put me next to, whether it's Xosha or Diapate's energy or, and now Manuso's, like, they're, again, inherently dramatic, but inherently comedic as well if we just play our objectives because we're both immovable objects in that scene.

42:45I want to talk specifically about the playing Carol against different energy because the logline is the most miserable person in the world must save the world. Vince, in the earliest days, like the blue sky days of the writer's room, what drove you to create the character of Minusos in the way that you did, potentially knowing that that specific friction would be so interesting? Because you'd almost, as a cliche, would think that, oh, you'd pair the miserable with the joyful, and you'd think Mr. Diabate would be the pairing that would be leading some sort of thing. You've chosen someone who is even more hardcore than she is.

43:18Yeah. Which is totally surprising and pays off beautifully. You just sort of think about it all day long and then slowly bang your head against the register wall. Is there a dent there at this point? Pretty much. It's a machine gun. It's like Jimmy Trashcan at HHM. Right. It looks like the trashcan at HHM. It's like having a bunch of Legos on a table and fitting them together. Is this pleasing? Let's try this. And that's kind of the job. It's not elegant. It's not an elegant process. It is a brute force process sometimes. In the case of that example, we already knew, I guess, reverse engine, trying to come up with a good answer about a great question that I had never thought about before.

44:01How did we do it? I guess I figured, well, we figured, because it is kind of a communal mind in the writer's room sometimes, but we figured there's already a pretty unhappy lady with the happiest person on earth, Zosia. So we already have that dynamic. So what other dynamic? Because you do want to put opposites or very different energy levels together because that leads to drama. We've got kind of a private Benjamin kind of character for folks who remember that movie. We've got Carol. Let's put her against a hardcore Navy SEAL. They both have similar goals except they're going to go about them in a very different fashion.

44:46And that's probably what the thinking was there. And you had a cleaner way to deal with Chekhov's gun in the car this time than you did in Breaking Bad. The shotgun in the cop car dealt with it very cleanly. It did come back. Yes. No headbanging necessary. Exactly. That was, I love the way you played that. And I love the way Gordon directed that. In episode 105, after this terrible night, sleeping in the police car with the gumball lights going. And then it's like you notice this button. Son of a bitch. I love that scene. That scene made me, and then finding the handcuff key. Yes, because I found, it's so wonderfully illustrated of just like, of Carol, like she frequently goes about things the hardest way she could.

45:31That's her MO, always. The hardest, just, you know, I got a three in the morning with a flashlight, like Margaret and Scully. Oh, dead body parts. It's like, you could have just asked him. Yep, yep. Yeah, when Diavante says, like, I asked him. That's how I found out. I was like, ah! You said, dude, why do you drink so much milk? Yeah, yeah, I love it. Horrible. I wanted to ask you about one of my favorite parts of the character is Carol's relationship to substance abuse. And the way that it kind of dots along is these little punctuation marks throughout the season of the breathalyzer in the beginning of the season, the sensor inside of the liquor cabinet, the reference to heroin use, and obviously the truth serum sequence.

46:16And tell me a little bit about like, because it's interesting how it's not her, it's not like her, like I'm leading with this, I'm in recovery or whatever. It's always in the background. I really loved that aspect of the character. Oh, thanks. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, we've been having so much fun speaking to journalists that even like hardcore journalists that like actually want to talk about philosophical questions about what this is bringing up for them. and we're hearing all these different things. It's wonderful. As you might imagine, you know, like, is it commentary on AI? But that was coming from an editor of a major publication and he was just sure it was.

46:53And I said, but that's the forefront of your mind. You're bringing to this show, what is the existential threat for you right now? When Vin started writing it 10 years ago, you know, the AI existed, but not the debate topic it is now. Likewise, the pandemic lockdown hadn't happened yet. And I bring that up because I had a journalist once say that she thought the entire thing, the entire show is a metaphor and portrait of grief and depression. Right. You know, being down a well and you can't and people are saying cheer up and you can't hear them and you can try to fake it, but you can't keep faking all this.

47:28And then another person said they think the whole show is about addiction. Wow. The entire thing. And I was like, that's so fascinating. And it's not. No, it isn't because there is no right answer. It's everything. It's about human nature. And with that part component that you're bringing up, I did ask, because it's important to me, I said, let me know if this is a portrait of alcoholism, I need to like layer that in. That's a different, and they said it's not. It's not, it is a, I can't remember the exact phrases that were told to me to help me in discovering all that stuff. but it had more to do with this is a self-medication issue, another way to block the world out, this misanthrope, that she takes too far sometimes.

48:12And clearly her wife was worried about her. But not worried about, like, she did that because they were trying to freeze eggs. Right. Do you know what I mean? So it was tied to a specific event. Yeah. So I felt like we kept it just from going off the cliff of, like, we should, Carol should be. That whole revelation is so great because it's in conjunction with Minuso's being convinced that they're being surveilled. Yeah. You know, and so like the parallel is awesome when that happens. Yeah, I think she, I think Carol takes a lot of things too far. Yeah. I think she's not very good in moderation.

48:49Oh, that'll end fine. Yeah, she's not a moderate kind of gal. And that's one example of it. Vince, I wonder what the experience has been like for you. because as Ray just mentioned, this was an idea that you've been kicking around for a while. And over time, I'm sure it's been shaded. Details have emerged. You found Ray to be the perfect star for it. And then events kind of started to chime with it in interesting ways. And it's proven to be a very seaworthy conceit that can be a mirror for so many of our own issues of our time. This is a high-minded question for a guy who's just been banging his head against the wall for 10 years.

49:25But I wonder, what has that experience been like as a creator, realizing that you have some, to reference the end of the season, some fissile material here. Oh, I love the way you put that. It's amazing. I just, I spent the last, how long did it take us to do, it's been like three years. I've lost track of the time. So have I, you mean since you sent me the first script? Yes. Probably three. Three years probably, okay. And then it took us quite a while to make the show, and then the first season, it took us quite a while to edit it and do all the visual effects. the last however many X number of years, let's call it three, although I'd been thinking about it for almost 10, I was telling myself, you know, three in the morning, you wake up in the middle of the night and worry about things.

50:11And I kept telling myself, it's okay to move away from Breaking Bad, the single biggest, the first thing on your tombstone, Breaking Bad, most likely. It's okay to move away from that because you had it. And just remember how insane the year 2013 was with like, you know, that was the closest I'll ever get to being a, like a, you know, like a rock and roll star or something, walking down the street and people like, oh my God, Breaking Bad. It's never going to happen again. And go forward with courage. Try something new because even if this thing, everybody collectively yawns when it comes out and then says, I should have done more breaking bad, at least you will have had the, you can be proud of yourself, you know, you had the courage to try something new.

50:57And then this thing comes out and it's just like, I, beyond, I don't know, beyond my wildest expectations about the reaction to it. And if it is, if it is fissile material, as you say, the timing was, was, was perfect. That's just dumb luck. I mean, we, we made the, we always make the best show we can make. That's always, we're never not going to do that. But then, as with anybody else, everybody else is out there making the best show they can make too, no matter what show it is. Because that's why you get into this business. You have love and passion. You want to make great things. And then the chips fall where they fall.

51:32Anyone who says luck didn't play a hand is lying either to themselves or to the person you're talking to. I would say about you, though, I think the fact that you don't write to particular themes, you're not trying to preach a specific thing, lends a timeless quality to it that is meeting the world right now in a place where, because what I'm hearing from a lot of people is this show is this great conduit for them to have some very nuanced conversations about a lot of areas that we have been thinking about for the last decade as very binary responses. It is definitely this or this and with a lot of it and seeking, you know, a way to have some conversations that are more nuanced and based in what does it mean to be human and what does happiness mean?

52:24And even you've said this before, like, happiness doesn't, seeking happiness doesn't mean avoiding all struggle, avoiding all, you know, thought provoking or difficult situations and conversations. And you've always thought that. So I just feel like the fact that he wasn't setting out to write to a particular thing is part of why it's seaworthy. Maybe. But I did have a question, if I may. When stuff started coming out, like the pandemic or AI, were you like, crap, they're going to think it's about this? I seriously thought that when the pandemic hit. I remember thinking, oh, my God, the last thing on Earth that anyone is going to want to buy or watch is something that they feel is about yet another pandemic.

53:06And I seriously, I had some dark days around, we all had a lot of dark days. Over your sourdough starter, you're working at it being like, oh no. But 2020 was a tough year for everybody. But I remember thinking, oh my God, this thing I've been working on now for five years, no one's going to want it. And luckily, I work slower than glaciers might. So then another five years went by. Almost in time for the next one. Yeah, almost in time for the next pandemic. Yeah, yeah. So I got to get this out before the next pandemic. And or now you have to do another season. So just to leave it on that note, where where are you in that process?

53:45Is there a third whiteboard behind Carol's two that has the whole process? Oh, man, I wish I wish elves would write all this out on a dry erase board and go take credit. Or Carol, for that matter. That'd be great. We are plugging away yesterday. Yesterday, we had our final day in the writer's room of season two for—don't get too excited. For this year. For the year 2025. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we are plugging away. We think we know what the first episode—what happens in the first episode. And we're going to keep nose to the grindstone and pedal to the metal in 2026. But it takes longer than I wish it did.

54:27I, you know, the old expression, you can have it good, you can have it fast, you can have it cheap. Pick two. You don't get all three. And we definitely cannot figure out how to do it fast. But we're having a good time. I got great, great writers. And can't wait to see what Ray and Carolina and Veska and Samba and, you know, all these wonderful actors do with season two. It's going to be fun getting back. I don't know anything. Yeah, I haven't told you yet. I don't know anything. That's a chance to ask him. You got him on the record. How is Carol's golf game in season two? Oh, this is all he wants to talk about.

55:04I can close my laptop. I got multiple texts being like, God, you can tell like the swing thoughts are different, you know, 45 days in versus when you first play on the course. Really? Yeah. Good. My swings, because I'm taking golf lessons now. For the character or out of personal interest? Personal and for something else. But I'm like, now it pains me. I just didn't, I feel so bad. I didn't get to get enough lessons. And I see that my stances, I think I pulled off looking like somebody who does golf. Yes. Just not really, really well, which is what I wanted to get to. And, um, I ran out of time.

55:41I did the best. I did the best. When you were hitting the skyscraper, you were dialed. You were, yeah. I had to do it where the ball goes. That is, uh, Diane Mercer in post. Yeah. You talk about the show being a mirror. Chris really only wanted to talk about the golf swing and the Zins that were for sale in the gas station. No, no Zin. There were no Zins. It was all cigarettes and my buddy and I was like, do you think that the others use Zin? Oh, interesting. They've cleaned them out. What's Zin? It's like a, I'm glad I get to do this with Vince Gilligan. It's like a tobacco pouch, like a nicotine pouch.

56:15Oh, okay, all right. But very popular with golfers, actually. Unfortunately popular with teens. Teens, yes. Don't do it. Not a good thing. Don't do it. 48-year-old men. my friend only wanted to talk about the lottery tickets in that scene something for everyone I just couldn't stop wrapping their head around so is there any joy in winning the lottery if money doesn't matter do you still feel like a winner but everybody won so does it matter I cannot answer these questions I thought your reaction was perfect because it's like and then it's over it means nothing but it is somehow I thought like that reaction for me was born out of like well at least it has nothing to do with them it is my own success because it's based on odds and luck that they didn't do yeah see cause I love the way you played it but you could have also gone now I fucking win the lottery now what about the last 30 years you could just go to Fort Knox anyway Ray, Vince thank you so much for joining us thank you so much for this season of TV thank you thank you thanks for having this course this was fun thanks super fun thank you guys